I'm dreaming of a California Christmas . . . but it sure is white outside.

It is so incredibly snowy here, you would hardly believe it. But we're expecting up to 8 inches in Southeastern Michigan. And it looks like there already nearly that much piled up on the whole world around the cottage. It feels a little like being in a gingerbread house with icing piled up around it.

I've added some posts over the past couple of days to Our Lady of the Woods, a place I envision for environmentally-oriented posts, links to media reports, information about consumption, and so on. It may be artificially segmenting my life to section those things off, but I envision this spot as a little more personal -- not in the sense of more important to me, necessarily, but just more chatty, more about my quotidian life, and far less likely to be of general interest to someone who doesn't know me. Also, I know Mom is deeply disturbed by my Keeper, so this way she doesn't need to hear all about things like that if she doesn't want to. :)

I am sitting here hidden away in my winter wonderland, reading my field notes from Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, in 2006, trying to make sense of everything, and thinking about bonds, partnerships, "sweat equity," and participation in housing programs in Central and Eastern Europe. I love the idea of this paper, but it's going to be hard to pull it together in the next day. I seem to be headed in the direction of thinking about global housing builds as a simulated religious experience for international volunteers, drawing on Victor Turner as well as an outstanding book called Participation: The New Tyranny? edited by Bill Cooke and Uma Kothari. I'm also going to be drawing on the readings for a course I took with Julia Paley last spring, on Democracy: Ethnography and Social Theory. Great class, great readings.

Now I just need to pull it all together . . . . and keep my mind calm while knowing that I still need to grade 15 more undergraduate papers, all (75) of the last quizzes, and check off the museum assignments of my students, and issue their final grades by the 20th, as well as writing my evaluation report for AFG and finishing up 22 more hours of field placement work. Luckily I can be writing my report in those hours. But still. That's all I have to do by the 21st. That, and work out the details of my academic planning with my advisor, and meet a professor to talk about prelims and hopefully manage to convince him that it's worth it to work with me even though he's about to leave the University of Michigan.

And my family wonders why I can't fathom talking about when I'm coming home for Christmas. Well . . . Mom, that's why! :( I miss you guys . .

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr. (Please let me know if you'd rather I not leave these up here, Marcell!)

Oh, my heart is a little broken over missing Robert Hass reading at UMMA yesterday. He is one of my very favorites. I even got out my old copy of Praise to lend to Katie after our late-night giddy return to e.e. cummings a few weeks ago.

(Late-night Monday edit: Oh, Marta, remember reading "Meditation at Lagunitas" aloud to one another with Ross, over and over again, when we were all ailing and huddling around together on the beds in our room in Spiti?

[It was Kaza, wasn't it? Where I hung on the shoulders of you both, and you dragged me, complaining the whole way, down the hill into the valley to the hospital, to get me medicine for my intestinal bug, only for us to discover a week later that I'd been taking sulfa drugs that gave me hives, and for Ross to discover a few months later, that the mangoes you brought me for comfort everyday were only further contributing to the allergy!? Those were the good old days, I tell you. The good old days of riding on a tractor to get between villages, drawing our tupattas over our mouths and noses to filter the dust, then taking turns racing to the toilet for our assorted ailments. . .] And then there was the night you went off on your date and the Scandinavian/Korean Christian Buddhist wooed me from below the wall where I was sitting and singing by myself, and gave me the book Living Buddha, Living Christ that I still can't quite let go of, though I've never quite read it either. . . Oh, how I miss being young, sometimes.)

Photograph by Marcell Nimfuhr.

Fitting, by the way. . . I'm the Hermit today. I wish I could hide away for a few more days. I think I could finally get all my work done if I could just have a respite from the social and not have to prepare a face to meet the faces that I meet...

I'm putting off even writing to and calling people I love. Yeah, I think that "I" in the Myers-Briggs from years ago probably still holds, even if I do flirt more than anybody you know. :P

Sunset, as Winter finally arrives in Michigan . . .

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A tour of my little house

To answer another one of Mom's requests, we're taking a tour of the inside of my cottage.

So, we enter through the kitchen, taking off our shoes to keep the water and mud from the gravel road and pathway to getting tracked throughout the cottage!

You can see here the style the owners used in renovating the kitchen, which I think is really sweet. The terra cotta with my blue Fiestaware remind me of the colors in my flat in Budapest. (I found that cobalt blue teapot at a yard sale in Ann Arbor this summer.) You can also see the beautiful stainless steel appliances they put in the kitchen -- Bosch dishwasher and gas range . . . swoon!

Over there on the counter you may notice my own electric appliances: I am still using that toaster oven I got in San Francisco, Mom's old breadmaker, and I've got a new rice maker I bought in an Asian shop here in Ann Arbor that makes me very happy. Behind it is hiding the vintage bean pot I was telling you about, Mom, as well as an old pottery bowl I bought at a garage sale back in Santa Cruz.

And then beyond, a CD tower I finally broke down and bought at IKEA to house my dozens of Eastern European CDs. Up top, I've still got that old fragment of an Indian screen that I bought years ago at the flea market in San Francisco. I'm still tempted to paint those blue walls a warm gold color, but I won't have the time to do it anytime soon, if I ever do.



And quickly we make our way in the open floorplan through to the living room. Here, you may recognize my old Salvador Dali lithographs Mom, Dad, and I bought at Price Costco so many years ago . . . that old antique buffet table you gave me when I moved to San Francisco, Mom, and that tiny marble-topped table you must have bought sometime after the Fire. You can also see my fireplace, the Firelight Glass lamps I have lit there on top of the buffet table, some houseplants I picked up at IKEA.

And there on the floor are the red and blue Turkish wool rugs I bought for my cottage in Austin when the floors were so cold and uninsulated I thought I'd freeze my feet if I didn't get some coverings on my floor. I bought those funny pale blue & rose vintage rugs for the same reason, at the same time -- and now they make a nice soft layer to sit on in front of the fire, much warmer than the concrete in front of the fireplace. I do love this hanging lantern-style light the owners have in the kitchen . . .


Taking a step down into the dining room and television corner, we look back up toward the living room from our spot beside the vintage Formica & chrome table. . . There's my cookbook collection, with those two pillar-style lamps I've had since Santa Cruz, and my much-beloved new red sectional couch. At the far end is the front door through which we entered the cottage.



Here, you can spy my grandfather's old accordion atop some funky vintage stacking tables I found at a garage sale. And the custom-made pine bookcase with an antique stained glass window for a door that I bought through craigslist. I keep my fiction books in there. And above it is the Elgin sunburst clock Mom got me at the senior's center in Minnesota this summer. Beside the bookcase is my old secretary desk with my poetry collection there, and beneath it I'm sure you'll notice the sewing machine you got me in Minnesota, Mom. Behind it is a funky old vintage suitcase I keep old photos and correspondence in.


Here, we turn the corner into my bedroom, where you can see that antique mirror I bought for $5 at a garage sale in Dexter, my vintage vanity table and glass lamps I bought from that sweet older couple on Huron River Drive, and the reproduction Depression glass candlesticks I've been carting around since I left my San Francisco studio in the TenderNob (I had bought them around the corner there at the Christian charity shop.) You might also recognize the vintage-style reproduction mirror from IKEA we'd admired together, Mom, and which in the end, I couldn't resist. Same goes for the bed frame.

And, because it used to be an old screened-in porch there, you step down into the section of the bedroom that I sleep in, which I curtain off for total coziness while I'm sleeping. On the floor you'll notice my meditation cushions atop the carpet I bought from the Kashmiri merchant in McLeod Ganj and shipped all the way from India. And, there's that old armoire Mom used to keep in the garage in Oakland.


We can stop for a moment at the bath, which is nothing special, but it's simple, functional, and all mine!


Go through that other little doorway, and you make your way into my office, and you can see just a couple of my many bookshelves . . .


And here is my workspace. This in and of itself could make the drive out to the boonies worthwhile, even if it weren't for the quiet and the beauty and the deep breaths of soul-regenerating fresh air. . .



The end! Come and visit the real thing soon! :)

It's quite a spectacular morning out here on the lake, the day after our first proper snow storm in Southeastern Michigan. (When it started the night before last, I was completely convinced the rustling sound was my mischievous possum friend in the leaves outside my office again, and it took my slipping on my shoes and taking my massive flashlight out to look at the icy pieces collecting on the empty ground before I was satisfied in the knowledge that I was alone with the snow.) I'm sitting here with a leftover slice of pumpkin pie and a milky coffee, enjoying the contrast of the clear blue sky with the bright bright white of the snow lit all up with sunlight, watching the occasional flashes of bluejays and cardinals darting through the trees in the garden plot across the way. I get up periodically to dance to a particularly inspiring bit of Regina Spektor or Aimee Mann and then rub orange-scented oil into my rather neglected vintage wood furniture.

My God, vacation is a delight. I've been making my way through the house with cleansers and cloths that had been hiding in the cupboard nearly since I purchased them. This is the kind of chore I dread when I come home from Southwest Detroit twelve hours after I left the house, when it's already dark outside, or from Ann Arbor after teaching my 75 students, with a stack of all their papers to grade . . . but on a day of quiet solitude with the autumn leaves floating by on the breeze, when I've made my way in my pajamas and slippers to the desk to turn on favorite music, to the stove to prepare a coffee, with a quick sneak outside to take a few adoring photos, it's a sweet joy. Attending the spiritual house.

Yesterday I spent the better part of the day hiding away in the kitchen, baking pumpkin pie and apple cobbler and enjoying the sweet spicy scents of autumn specialities merging with the warmth of vanilla and aromatherapy candles. (More on that in Kitchen Empress!)

I then made the trek down to Ann Arbor to spend a beautiful Thanksgiving evening with Alice and her family: her brother and sister-in-law, their darling child, all the adoring grandparents,and a lovely German neighbor family, with two angelic children whom I teased with little songs I dusted off from my high school German classes. The food was delicious, the company even more of a treat. I would have loved to have seen my own family, but I'm just too tired and broke and behind in my work to travel anywhere right now. Lucky that I have an adopted family through my dear friend :) In the end, we had FOUR DESSERTS to go with the feast, because Alice's sister-in-law AND her mother both also baked pies. Apple cobbler, and pies from pumpkin, rhubarb, and Concord grape. A true autumn bounty.

Here, some of the sneaky photos. . .

My view of the neighbors' lots filled with snow.


The boats and docks stacked for the winter and gathering snow.



And a glance across the lake on the near side, with the shore dusted with white.


And this one's for Mom, finally -- a glimpse of the humble exterior of my little cottage, from the gravel road. Behind, you can spy the lake around on the other side of the tiny house. In the foreground, you can see my little herb garden that I planted shortly after I moved here in June, with rosemary, sage in a pot, savory, and two varieties of lavender that seem to be thriving since the weather has cooled a bit. (We'll see how they do with the freezing temperatures.) And through the window there, if you were looking right now, you'd see me here at my computer on my massive L-shaped IKEA desk, in my PJs, shuffling papers, pulling some fresh clothes out of the dryer, listening to the Decemberists, finishing my coffee, and contemplating starting some writing. If I have my way, depending on how things go in the next few years, this may be the window I look from when I'm writing up my dissertation one day. . .

even the grey days are stunning . . .

Why I moved to the country?

People in Ann Arbor, who know me as a full-time doctoral student -- or perhaps as their Anthropology instructor -- are often bewildered when I announce that I live in the country. I can tell by the blank looks or even by the curious responses. Why did you decide to move, they want to know. How can I begin to articulate the meaning of the transformation I have undertaken in my life recently? It is so much greater than I could possibly convey in a casual conversation. The explanations for me, besides, seem to be captured in the senses far more readily than in words. In fact, the departure is about the distance from language. (Words, words, words. . .)

It's captured, for instance, in the smell and concentrated pulse of heat and the ambient glow from the wood fire in the fire place . . .



And my fingers rediscovering dough. . .
. . . and the smell of homemade quiche baking in the oven.
. . . for instance.

Autumn Sunset